{"id":10027,"date":"2016-12-14T12:57:20","date_gmt":"2016-12-14T17:57:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=10027"},"modified":"2019-05-15T13:46:24","modified_gmt":"2019-05-15T17:46:24","slug":"city-lights-at-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=10027","title":{"rendered":"City lights at night"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dark comes so early now – it’s hard to make myself get out and exercise.<\/p>\n

But the evening was warm, the air moist, a lovely mist had rolled in. I went for a walk in the city.<\/p>\n

Even that early, 6:15 p.m., the city seemed quiet. Still lots of traffic, but the air itself muffled it down.<\/p>\n

I carry a tactical flashlight with me when I’m walking alone in dark areas. Its\u00a0beam of light is strong enough to temporarily blind any would-be mugger.<\/p>\n

Testing it, I caught\u00a0the fine water droplets streaking through the air:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Seeing the moisture made me feel enveloped and oddly protected. I bonded\u00a0with the air – lighter, more at ease. Shrugged the cool off my shoulders and looked with bigger eyes.<\/p>\n

I felt writerly, walking in the city at night.<\/p>\n

I saw people in their comings and goings – a tired techie walking home from the office, a uniformed service worker waiting for a ride, a teenager hovering near the bus stop – and for each I imagined full characters in their own dramas.<\/p>\n

My mind has a criminal tendency, so when I saw two men transferring packages between a UPS truck and a UHaul, I suspected a heist of Christmas gifts and surreptitiously took a photo:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

[Today, the mystery was solved when I saw a UPS worker delivering out of\u00a0a Budget rental truck. UPS has to handle an enormous volume in December; it’s smart to rent extra trucks rather than maintain that fleet year-round.]<\/p>\n

I walked for an hour – up a quiet side street, on a bridge over the freeway, down a major thoroughfare.\u00a0Everywhere, the water in the air softened the light and painted beauty.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

An iPhone isn’t the ideal camera for these conditions, but then, the best camera is the one you have with you.<\/p>\n

The blurring made these photos retain some of the softness that I saw in the night light.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It obliterated details that would distract from lovely lines and shapes, like this tree:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Very near the condo, I stood for a couple minutes just admiring the reflection of the street lights on the back of a road sign.<\/p>\n

Gorgeous.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A woman walking her dog looked at me a bit worriedly.<\/p>\n

I laughed aloud to assure her that yes, I am indeed crazy.<\/p>\n

Feels good to be crazy, on this night.<\/p>\n

Today’s penny is a 1990, commemorating 100 years of electric street lights<\/a>\u00a0in America: “By 1890 there were more than 130,000 arc lamps installed as streetlights.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dark comes so early now – it’s hard to make myself get out and exercise. But the evening was warm, the air moist, a lovely mist had rolled in. I went for a walk in the city. Even that early, 6:15 p.m., the city seemed quiet. Still lots of traffic, but the air itself muffled … read more City lights at night<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10039,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[317],"tags":[58,355,495,111,200,156,679,636],"class_list":["post-10027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beauty","tag-58","tag-color","tag-dark","tag-electricity","tag-light","tag-photography","tag-reflection","tag-walking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10027"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10047,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10027\/revisions\/10047"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}